


you made it through, you finally moved - that's good for you

by swimthewholeriogrande



Series: Call This Living [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Heat Stroke, Hurt Jake Peralta, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:09:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: It's a typical day on the job, until it isn't.





	you made it through, you finally moved - that's good for you

**Author's Note:**

> Think I'm gonna turn this into a series of Jake recovery fics! Let me know if you'd like that!  
> Title from Baby Shoes by Bad Books!

One of the things Jake missed the most in prison was space - everything was so cramped and close, the walls and other inmates, and he'd wanted so badly to have room to breathe. Now that he's out, he can't stop moving, jittery and jumping and full of energy to spare. 

So when he gets the chance to chase a perp, even on the hottest day in June, he revels in it. Charles is hot on his heels, shouting excitedly, but even he falls behind as Jake races after the dealer down the backstreet. His heart is beating out of his chest; blood thrums through his limbs, behind his eyes, and he is so, so alive - he's breathing hard, not as fit as he used to be as a beat cop, but he's catching up. 

He makes a sharp turn and suddenly loses sight of the man. Charles is far behind, so Jake slows to a walk and scans the alley, unsure as to where the perp possibly could have gone, when - 

His head is slammed into the wall a split second after the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and stars bloom in his vision and spike white-hot around his skull. Jake staggers, feeling clumsily for his gun, but he's woozy and the other man knocks him off the bricks again. This time he manages to grab the perp's wrist but his fingers slip, stunned. 

He hears fumbling and a creak, and as he blinks away the spots he's pushed backwards, hard. He falls against something hard and oddly shaped - it's some kind of piping, one of the electricity boxes set into the walls of the city. Jake goes to stand and smacks his head off the roof barely a metre off the ground. He's scrunched into a ball against the metal, and he goes to scramble out of the tiny space, when the door shuts in his face.

It's instantly pitch black. He hears the perp panting, scuffling, the scrape of something pressing against the door. He goes to kick at it, barely able to move his leg and nearly breaks his foot - it's something heavy, maybe some abandoned furniture. Jake feels the weight of it shoot up his toes. 

This is all right, though - this is going to be hilarious. It'll be super embarrassing, sure, but the story of him getting locked in a box by a perp? It's the stuff of legend. Jake's already planning how he'll tell the story in Shaw's that night when Charles bumbles by to spring him out. 

Except. 

Except it's been a few minutes now and he could've sworn he heard Charles go past, and he'd kicked against the door again to make a sound but he can barely move. The pipes are digging into his arm, his hip, the soft part of his stomach, and he literally cannot unscrunch. He's curled up like a little kid. 

Blood runs down the back of Jake's head, snaking down his neck into his shirt. Huh. Charles is really taking his time. Jake huffs into his forearm. _This isn't ideal,_ he thinks grimly, and tries to wiggle out of the way of the offending pipes but the door is tight against his other side. 

Right. Cool. Right. _Cool._

-

Charles circles back three times, and then calls a cop on the corner at Sal's to see if he saw Jake go past. No one's seen him. He's not answering his phone and the perp is nowhere to be seen.

More confused than worried, he heads back to the 99, and calls it in, and then he rings Amy.

Amy's at a conference in Maine - for some new procedure or untested gear or something, For the first time in her life, she's not paying attention to the speaker, but to her phone.

CHARLES BOYLE: Jakehammer's gone AWOL! Has he called u? LOL

She calls Jake three times from the bathroom and he doesn't answer; the fourth time it goes straight to voicemail and she texts Charles.

AMY SANTIAGO: Where was he?

CHARLES BOYLE: Chasing a perp. Lost him - too fast. LOL.

AMY SANTIAGO: For the last time, LOL doesn't mean lots of love. I'll come back.

She doesn't wait for him to answer before putting the phone in her pocket and going to her hotel room to repack. It's nothing, it's definitely nothing, but it's been four hours since Charles last saw Jake, and it feels -

Amy shuts her eyes. It feels like she's losing him all over again.

-

Jake doesn't know how long it's been. It's been too long. The sun must be beating down, because the tiny box is starting to feel like an oven and he's sweating buckets - he knows he's getting dehydrated by the pounding headache, or maybe it's the head wound that's congealed uncomfortably on the back of his skull.

It's so dark. He's losing track of whether his eyes are open or not. He's losing track of where he is - because there's no goddamn air and he is sitting in solitary confinement, slamming his fists against grey block walls, pacing around and around. And it isn't fair - the warden put him in here for nothing. The room is small and dim and he is rabid, feral, half-sobbing.

"Let me out!" he calls, but it's only a panicked wheeze. He thought he got out - thought they proved his innocence - but here he is in an even smaller cell that is baking him alive. His hair is sleek and matted with sweat; his muscles are locking, cramping, aching in his curled form.

He breaks a nail on the barricaded door and the pipes jab his sides and he snarls, fevered and scared. Time rolls thick and hot over him. No air. No _air._

-

Terry catches the perp at 8 at night. By this point, no one has seen Jake Peralta for nearly ten hours, and Amy is apoplectic trying to book a flight home. So when the dealer walks in - the last person in contact with Jake, as far as they know - the interrogation is hard and leaves no room for comfort. 

He is so obviously hiding something it's almost laughable. Would be laughable, if Terry wasn't worried that if he tried to go home he'd find Jake's body in an alley on the way. So he stays late, past hours - they all do. No one goes home, not even Gina, who's rarely in work when she's supposed to be.

When the dealer won't crack, they spend an hour reviewing surveillance footage from across the city, which turns out to be a complete bust. Jake is seen running down a street and then - nothing. The perp leaves the alley but Jake doesn't, and Terry's already sent beat cops there, and they found no one. Jake Peralta has vanished off the face of the Earth.

Then Holt stands up eventually, face smooth and emotionless as always, and declares he'd like to try interrogation.

And then he calls Terry back in, tells him the perp would like confess - and Terry doesn't know what Holt must have said to him, but what he does know is this: a father will do anything, anything, to save his child.

-

Jake is tired.

He knows it must have been a day by now, or maybe a year. He thinks he hears movement outside at one point, but it fades, and he fades, and he can't move even if he tried. His body is heavy and probably disgusting, but he can't see. It's so dark. 

His fingernails are cracked and aching; there's no oxygen in his lungs, long expunged by helpless, hopeless hyperventilations for air that did won't come.

Jake thinks - he knows - he's a dead man. He had the same feeling with Romero, leaning over him with the knife pressed into his chest, and he has it now, the burning metal compacting his body into a tiny ball of fever and hot, hard breath.

"I didn't do it, I..." His head is spinning. The darkness is morphing into faces that he loves and ones that he hates, and the little Amy voice in the back of his head is saying _you're hallucinating._ Jake wants to cry.

He doesn't think he has the water to spare.

When the light comes, it's blinding. Jake hardly notices that the pressure of the door against his left side suddenly disappears because he's too busy cringing into the bruising pipes, letting out a keening cry that rattles in his throat.

Someone says "oh my God,", awe and horror, and Jake feels huge, familiar hands pull at him gently. It's Terry. It's _Terry._ Jake's muscles ache as he's tugged out of the tiny space, completely cramped, and he tries blindly to stay in his tiny ball.

Terry starts unfolding his limbs gently, keeping Jake close to his form in a protective kinda-dad-like way. Jake knows on some level he's making noise, moaning in pain and maybe some muffled words, because Terry keeps shushing him.

"Get the medics, now." Jake hears Terry snap, and then the older man is turned back to him. Jake thinks he says something else then, because Terry replies, "No, she was at the conference, remember?" 

Jake doesn't remember; he doesn't know anything. He wants to see Amy and he wants out, out, out, away from the heat and the dark and _the cell, the guards spitting through the tiny window, his mind circling and tangling like so many frayed ropes in a knot that presses on his skull -_

"Stay with me, Jake. Jake -"

Jake turns his head to the side and vomits, and that's all he remembers now.

-

They sit in the waiting room for hours. Jake's being treated for extreme heatstroke, dehydration and concussion. A doctor comes out and updates them every now and then; Jake is stable, then he crashes, then he's stable again, and then he's having seizures. The doctor says it's the damage done to his nervous system; he says it's hard to know the extent of the damage; he says Jake's muscles are swollen and stiff.

Amy arrives two hours after Jake's admitted, a whirlwind, a frenzy of panic. Terry has to bodily restrain her when they tell her what had happened - that the perp had locked Jake in a metal electricity box and left him to die in the heatwave. That he'd almost succeeded.

When she's finally allowed to see Jake, Amy's knees nearly buckle with relief. He's got an IV in each arm, his skin still flushed and dry, but there's ice packs under his armpits and yep, okay, his groin. That's gotta hurt, she thinks absently, almost amused, and then she half-sobs; he looks 20 years old again.

It takes so long for him to wake up that she doesn't think he will at all, but when he does his eyes are glazed and confused. "Ames." he murmurs, his hands twitching, "wha'..."

She puts on her best smile and squeezes his wrist tight. "You're in hospital." she says. She can't help but notice how cracked and destroyed his nails are, and his voice is so raw. "Do you remember?"

He shakes his head sluggishly. "You were in Maine." he tries slowly. "You were...I was..." There's a distant flicker on his face, a shadow passing. "I was back in prison."

"No!" Amy says sharply, and then she calms herself. "Not prison, babe. You...you got hurt, on a chase. I'll tell you later."

Tired, delirious Jake seems to accept this. Then his eyes go wide, so suddenly that she half-starts, and he hisses. "Amy!" he yelps, electrified, "why is my junk so cold!?"

She can't help but laugh. "The doctors -"

"Mmkay." The fit of awareness passes; Jake's head drops to the pillow. "I'm tired."

Amy's heart aches with fondness; she brushes his stiff, matted curls off his forehead. "You should rest."

His gaze rolls towards her, trusting and dull. "You'll stay till I wake up?" Jake asks, almost hesitant, and Amy shuts her eyes for a second. Her husband. He doesn't deserve that doubt. He doesn't deserve any of this.

Then she regains composure, smiles as gently as she can. "Of course," she promises, and she stays.


End file.
